Military Embedded Systems

NEW YORK & COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado. CAES Space Systems, a supplier of high-reliability electronic solutions is now rebranded as Frontgrade Technologies. Officials at Veritas Capital, a technology and government investment firm that has Frontgrade Technologies in its portfolio, announced the change.

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, California. The RQ-4 RangeHawk from Northrop Grumman provided support for the first flight of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket during the recent Artemis 1 mission. RangeHawk is part of SkyRange, the Department of Defense (DoD) Test Resource Management Center’s uncrewed high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE), responsive mobile flight test initiative.

Experts from the Navy Air Combat Electronics program office (PMA-209) recently participated in the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) and Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Consortia exposition in Dayton, Ohio. At the event the Avionics Architecture Team (AAT) for PMA-209 demonstrated several of its open architecture (OA) projects that are reducing software integration time and maintenance costs for the U.S. Navy. 

Power is a key consideration for modern open architecture initiatives such as the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard, says John Sturm, Vice President of Business Development for the Aerospace & Defense business unit of Vicor, when I interviewed him just before Thanksgiving. We also discussed where custom power supplies fit into the defense world and talked about how commercial AI and big data applications are driving innovation and cost reductions in defense power component manufacturing, recruiting engineering talent into the defense market, and what will be a disruptor in military power supplies in the future. Edited excerpts follow.

BARCELONA, Spain. Danlaw Inc., a leading global automotive and aerospace electronics solutions provider, acquired Maspatechnologies SL, a spin-off of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS). Maspatechnologies will join the Danlaw-owned Rapita Systems group and now operate as Rapita Systems SL from offices in Barcelona.

WASHINGTON. Those developing the process for conforming to the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard want a process that is easy to understand, is affordable, and that keeps vendors honest. SOSA representatives C. Patrick Collier, Mark Littlefield, and Ilya Lipkin outlined the status of the conformance process at a SOSA briefing held at the AOC Annual Symposium in Washington this week.

“Is it difficult covering standards, is it getting slow?” my dinner companion asked on the eve of the AUSA 2022 Annual Meeting in Washington. He noted how technical standards bodies can be plodding, taking months to deliberate on a specific point without creating much news.

RF and microwave solutions are a critical ingredient in the U.S. military’s plans to adapt fifth-generation wireless technology, or 5G, as the technology will be essential to create more tools for the joint forces.

Vetronics systems today are increasingly focused on C4ISR [command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance], interoperability with other battlefield elements, and the capability to be optionally unmanned if necessary. They are also more likely to be built on open architectures as the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) continues the push toward a modular open systems approach (MOSA) in upgrades and new designs.

Welcome to our 2022 September Resource Guide, which for the tenth year in a row is 100 pages or more. This feat follows on the heels of our July/August MES issue of 48 pages plus the 76-page SOSA Special Edition. We also added a new print brand this year, mailing with our April/May issue – the FACE Special Edition. Thanks as always to our loyal readers and advertisers for their support. And a special thanks to our editorial staff and contributing authors for providing content that keeps people turning our pages.

Welcome to the 2022 SOSA Special Edition, our second of what is an annual issue, highlighting editorial content on SOSA from the pages and website of Military Embedded Systems Magazine, as well as the products aligned and conformant to the technical standard – all put together exclusively by our staff. Learn about it all in the 2022 SOSA Special Edition!

The procurement challenges facing defense technology companies range from a slow U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition process to supply chain headaches to when and where to leverage commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology and open architectures.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado. Leveraging commercial technology and managing risk in military unmanned systems is the subject of a live Q&A with David Michleson, Program Manager, Defense Innovation Unit (DIU); James Poss (Maj. Gen USAF Ret.); and Dawn Zoldi, (Col., U.S. Air Force, Ret.), Founder & CEO of P3 Tech Consulting LLC, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, during Law-Tech Connect Workshop (LTCW) Online virtual event.

Following what has been a busy springtime returning to in-person military conferences and trade shows like the Sea-Air-Space Expo and SOFIC, launching our own virtual events, and keeping up with all the latest defense electronics news and trends like the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) modular open systems approach (MOSA) strategies, the summer slowdown has been sweet.

WATERLOO, Ontario. Pixus Technologies engineers released a VITA 46.11 compliant chassis manager aligned to the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Sttandard that sits behind an OpenVPX backplane.

DAYTON, Ohio. Registration is live for the U.S. Air Force - FACE and SOSA Consortia Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) and expo being held on September 27, 2022 at the Dayton Convention Center in Dayton, Ohio. The event will feature expert presentations and demos by a cross-section of the defense community and industry on Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) and Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) related topics by a cross-section of the defense community, industry, and academia.

ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, Florida. Engineers at EIZO Rugged Solutions Inc. released the Condor GR2S-A4500 – a 3U OpenVPX form factor video graphics & GPGPU output card designed for high-performance embedded computing (HPEC) apoplications that is also aligned to The Open Group Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard, Edition 1.0.

Military funding – not only for traditional long-life missions but also for nontraditional shorter life, lower-cost small satellite applications – continues to grow. Radiation-hardened component designers are working to meet the reduced size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) demands of these new missions while maintaining radiation tolerance and dealing with the supply-chain headaches that continue to plague the electronics industry.

Imagining military artificial intelligence (AI) applications can make one dream up scenarios like those in the Terminator films, but in reality, AI solutions for defense are much more mundane and focused on improving decision-making for humans, whether they’re aircraft maintenance personnel; pilots; or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) analysts, says John Canipe, Director of Business Development, Air Force, at SparkCognition Government Systems, during a conversation we had at his company headquarters in Austin, Texas. We also discussed the difference between AI and machine learning (ML), how AI is being applied across multiple military domains, and more. Edited excerpts follow.

Enthusiastic crowds were a theme at each show I attended over the last six months, as folks were eager to be back among their defense industry colleagues, clients, and partners. None were more excited than attendees at the annual Special Operations Forces Industry Conference (SOFIC) in Tampa, Florida, a show put on by the National Defense Industries Association (NDIA). Navigating the exhibition aisles of that show was like trying to walk through a crowded bar, as this was SOFIC’s first in-person get-together since 2019.